Fortifications question

[Marcello]

I have some questions about fortifications in the OOBs.
Should the fortifications available be patterned after what a given country did actually build either in peacetime or in wartime ?
Or are they meant to be semi-standardized items for the sake of game balance?
For example if, let's say, Iraq never built anything more than a few blockhouses for infantry weapons during its wars should bunkers armed with antitank guns stay because everyone else get them?

Another question. Are the weaker turret fronts in bunkers meant to represent loopholes? Isn't the "weak spot hit" routine sufficient to handle that?

[Mobhack]

Fortifications in the OOBs are really just a generic item.

Should you even try to cover all the possible fort options a particular nation could build, then you would fill the entire OOB with variants.

If you need a specific fort for a particular scenario - then you should use one of the stock items as a base and modify it in the scenario editor and/or scenhack to suit.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

I used to have a lovely essay on the conflict in wargames between "realism" and gameplay. Unfortunately it's trapped in a defunct HD but , as I recall, the bottom line is it is impossible to create a game that is both 100% historically accurate and 100% playable and more importantly it is impossible to keep everyone happy who leans one way or the other. This is the stage we are at right now with both these games and have been for awhile.

"Bunker's and "fortifications" are just generic terms for dug in emplacements and they are given "armour" to ensure they are aren't easily destroyed and we use pre existing Icons to represent them. When we create them there are no "intelligence" reports detailing their construction or what they contain. Oddly enough armies go to great length to NOT give out info like that so these are simply suppositions of what an army might do with the weapons they have at hand. One could call these " educated guesses " or WAG's or anything in-between. It really depend on where any one particular player stands in the " realism" and "gameplay" issue.

Marcello, IDK which time period you are referring to but I find it more than a bit difficult to believe that at one time or another, especially in it's war with Iran, that Iraq didn't dig ATG's into fortified positions. The bottom line here is I have NO intention of researching the engineering habits of 92 nations. I'm sure SOMEBODY will take this to mean we don't care about "realism" and frankly both Andy and I are beyond caring. That's life. It's impossible to make everyone happy. I'm not going to try.

In this case the balance between "realism" and gameplay falls on the side of gameplay and the bunkers stay the way they are.

Don

[Marcello]

To clear any misunderstanding, I am asking this for more for modding and general knowledge purposes than anything else, I am not arguing that antitank bunkers should be removed from the official iraqi OOB or any other country (that would be a waste of time, considered the others far more necessary modifications).
I was under the impression that bunkers were meant to be that, bunkers (built with concrete/sandbags/whatever, usually overhead cover and all that) and entrenchements were covered by the trenches/foxholes/revetments available in the game.
While fortifications are, by their nature, non standard
there are such things as patterns, regulations, doctrine, available materials and so on.
The iraqis, for example, did dig their ATGs of course but if the info I am getting is correct they did not put them into bunkers with overhead cover and the majority of their bunkers were of the shelter type.

The bottom line is that I wanted to know if modifying bunkers to reflect actual usage patterns is something in the not do list (like issuing jeeps with pistols and the like) because it upsets balance.

Apologies if the purpose of my question was not clear in the original post.

[DRG]

My apologies Marcello. By this time in the cycle of patch releases I've put in somewhere around 750 hours 10-12 hours per day dealing with almost nothing but problems and complaints and I start to loose whatever enjoyment I had for the game and right now I'm about two weeks over the line.

Bunkers and forts are whatever the OOB designer decided to add in. Ask 10 people and get 10 different answers as to what should be "correct". Maybe the Iraqis didn't dig in their ATG's into overhead cover. Do you know that for certain or only because no source says so directly ? It's a WAG in most cases based on whatever info is at hand at the time. Do you have any evidence as to what kind of Bunkers Paraguay might build ? How about Indonesia ? We provide bunkers and forts for gameplay in assault missions. They are generic, made up units based on available weaponry.

Don

[Marcello]

"Do you know that for certain or only because no source says so directly?"

I am doing a research using photographic evidence, US Army manuals and reports detailing iraqi fortifications patterns, Iran Iraq war reports and asking to american veterans about the types of fortifications encountered during GW and OIF.
I am not finished yet and given the nature of the matter one will never be 100% sure, but that is where things are heading . As I said it is not worth the time for an official release but it is possible,for a mod, to make "historical" (to a certain extent at least) fortifications for some of the nations. The US Army manuals for example go to great lenghts detailing field bunkers construction, specifying thicknesses, materials to be employed etc. Pictures of actual bunkers in Iraq and show that relatively standardized patterns are indeed used.

[Marek_Tucan]

Good luck searching, I had enough headaches from research concernin Czechoslovakian pre-WWII fortifications and then there was plenty of literature (sometimes it was more of disadvantage when every single source stated different numbers... You know how it goes )